She’s 19. He’s 53. This is an acceptable dating age gap, am I right? No moral judgment here. And there is definitely no moral judgment from the author of a gut-wrenching new novel from Germany.

An East German couple with a large dating age gap

Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann, is set in East Germany before the wall came down in 1989. The Greek word kairos means a crucial time for action; an opportune moment. In the novel, “kairos” could refer to protests in East Germany that brought the wall down and, for the East German characters, resulted in sudden, dramatic, unexpected, and not altogether welcome changes. It could also refer to decisions made by West Germany that are referenced only obliquely in the novel.

But “kairos” could also refer to the many opportune moments in the characters’ lives. Especially on the day of their first meeting.

When is the dating age gap too large?

I don’t suppose there’s a hard line between right and wrong. It is telling, though, that although the two main characters of Kairos both seize the day upon meeting and decide to get coffee together, they are both self-conscious about their large age difference. She asks for her coffee without sugar, hoping this will make her seem more mature. He feels like “an old man in her young eyes.”

The problem persists. Her friends and family don’t understand and try to persuade her to stop seeing him. He starts obsessing about the young men she knows and pursues an impossible quest to prove, to his own anxious self, that she loves him and not them.

Love can flower despite a large dating age gap

What I loved best about Kairos was Erpenbeck’s fluidity in moving back and forth between the two main characters, without the need for paragraph breaks, quotation marks, or sometimes even periods. She weaves their experiences together in her paragraphs to unite them in the reader’s mind. Their love seems real, sustained, and unbroken, despite their age difference. Here’s an example:

“When I saw you, he says, I thought my heart would stop. But you survived. Yes, he says, I survived my joy, but it was a near thing. He looks all over her face like a map. How young she is, he thinks, and how unspoiled, the child’s look hasn’t quite gone from her eyes. You didn’t turn around when we said goodbye last, he says, I thought that was a bad omen, and I, she says, thought you had forgotten me because you never called once, and I, he says, thought you didn’t want me anymore. Of all the emotions in the soul of the young girl there is at that moment only one remaining: happiness.”

Despite the paucity of indicators in this paragraph, it is clear who is saying what and who is thinking or feeling what. I want to emphasize how difficult that is for a writer to accomplish. Erpenbeck shows mastery in communicating facts to the reader with a minimum of clunky authorial intervention.

I also admire the way much of this passage seems to be from the man’s perspective, until the last sentence, which is from the woman’s perspective. How seamlessly the perspective shifts!

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It’s not the dating age gap, it’s the toxicity of the relationship

A large dating age gap might concern some people not so much because of the dating age gap itself, but because it could result in too much of an imbalance of power in the relationship. The older partner might have opportunities to be manipulative toward the younger partner due to greater experience, connections, financial resources, and so on. The younger partner might have opportunities to be manipulative toward the older partner due to greater health, physical or cognitive abilities, attractiveness, and so on.

In Kairos, the relationship is imbalanced not only because of the dating age gap, but because he is married with a teenage son. Unfortunately, the relationship becomes more toxic as time passes.

In my last blog post, I wrote about a novel that portrays BDSM in a positive light. In Kairos, BDSM is not portrayed so well. Here there is neither explicit consent nor safety precautions. The author again passes no judgment—but I did as a reader.

On the other hand, the novel was ambiguous enough to leave room for doubt about what was actually happening, which made me wonder, am I understanding and thinking about this right? This is a book that keeps you on your toes.

I will say this. Whether there is a dating age gap or not, if you’re in a toxic relationship and are being physically or emotionally harmed against your will, or are feeling unsafe or constrained or unable to be yourself, no amount of love can or should make up for it. Get out. Now.

But a character in a novel will make her own decisions.

Why read Kairos?

Kairos won the 2024 International Booker Prize. Chair of Judges Eleanor Wachtel said, “What makes Kairos so unusual is that it is both beautiful and uncomfortable, personal and political.” I agree. It’s well worth a read.

What is the largest dating age difference you have experienced? What do you think is and isn’t an acceptable dating age gap?